For those who haven't noticed already it has been on the front page for a couple days now. No official thread though? Have this one...

Thought I'd throw in my experiences with the GPS which seemed to be a problem in the review.

If you install the software that comes on the CD with the camera, when you connect the camera to the computer it will download GPS quick fix data for the following month. This allows the camera to get a GPS fix quicker than without. It seems to be updated daily, so if you connect the camera to a computer at least once a month, you'll always have current quick fix data. The quick fix data appears to be stored in the camera and isn't affected if you swap memory cards.

With the quick fix data installed, I find from powering up you can get a GPS lock in perhaps 30 seconds or so given a clear sky and no obstructions around the camera. According to the manual the GPS detector is next to the flash on the top of the camera.

Since GPS works on accurate time keeping, it seems it can take a little longer the first time the GPS is used in a long time. The camera can re-sync its internal clock to GPS so it should be pretty accurate most times.

The negative I find for the GPS is if you turn the camera off for more than a few seconds, the next time you turn it on it has to get a fix again. I don't know how long the GPS retains fix once you turn off, but very short periods it seems to keep the fix. But say a minute or longer and it has to start again. I guess this is to save battery. If the GPS is running even when off it could eat the battery. So if you want lots of photos with a fix, you have to avoid turning the camera off, or be prepared to wait each time you turn it on for getting a fix.

The above is with the quick fix data downloaded. I don't know how much slower it is without that. I also don't have any other GPS enabled camera for comparison.

Hi, I am new on this forum, and as first message, I would like to post a comment on the DSC-HX9V.
Based on several reviews which were all very positive, I just purchased this camera, and being a sensor designer myself, I had to do some testing, and already in the first round, this went haywire. I wanted to check the camera’s dynamic range, and for this I picked as object the corner of a room, pretty dark, with on one side a window being hit directly by the sun. At high ISO (I used 1600), and f/3.3 aperture, everything was fine. Only lots of noise as can be expected.
Then, at ISO 100 and the same aperture. The camera recommended me a shutter time of 1/20 s, so I took this as reference, and from there on went up and down in shutter time with a factor of 2.
Big was the surprise when with the settings recommended by the camera, I had 2 bright blue cones in the image, centered towards the middle of the image and facing away from the location of the window. Zooming in on the cones showed me a blue color for all pixels, with stronger centers though, meaning that the blue pixels are coupling with their neighbors. At least that is the only way that I can explain it from a sensor point of view. The same effect showed up for all images where the integration time was larger, and it is only for shutter times shorter than 1/80 s that the cones disappeared, however at the cost of signal level in the dark portion.
I think that it is clear that these blue cones are caused by the optics, and there I see as explanation an option for ghost images or an option for chromatic aberration. However, and please correct me if I am wrong, I thought that these 2 effects were the strongest at the edges of the lens, and not in the middle.
I contacted Sony, but the response which I got was that they have never seen this effect, and they don’t know how to correct it.
Has anyone else seen this or similar? If so, I would love to hear your findings.

As to being sluggish, yes it can be. And another feature which I am really missing is the macro setting. Now, automatic scene recognition decides when to go to macro. And when used to a DSLR, the macro capability is poor. But, for that you get the extreme zoom.

Thanks Popo. Because of the perfect cone shape I did not think of that, and I have to be honest, I have never seen or heard of such a perfect geometrical figure caused by lens flare.
One question though. A typical example of lens flare is sun light, showing up as streaks, flares in the picture, and here you maintain the colorimetric properties of the light beam. In my case however, only blue is seen. Do you see any reason?

It is only a guess, but I'd suspect the lens coatings used to reduce unwanted reflections may play a part. The angle of reflection in this case may be such that wavelengths other than blue are adequately suppressed but blue isn't. Possibly there may be a contribution due to white balance also.

That is indeed something I tought about too, but in this case you would not have the filters only letting pass the blue (constant refractive index means no diffraction or interference), but you would have an up-conversion of green /red to blue. This done for example with some OLED materials, but it is more an upconversion to green. I doubt influence of the AWB, as this is done in the digital portion of the read-out. It still remains an open question why the cone is perfectly formed.

More thoughts on GPS: I was at the Hawk Conservancy Trust today. I used the HX9V amonst other cameras. I noticed I didn't succeed in getting GPS lock at all, even when I had the camera out for some prolonged periods.

The only thing I can think of here is that the area was generally covered by trees. Maybe the camera GPS sensitivity isn't great, so that even trees were blocking the signal.

Indeed, I have the same problem and have given up on the GPS. I wonder what Sony did wrong. If I compare with my cell, a ZTE Skate, the GPS locks in immediately, even when indoors, and there is no big effect on power consumption noticeable.

I did a test of the HX9V GPS acquisition, and compared it against my old satnav: a Tomtom One v2. The satnav is so old that the Tomtom PC software doesn't send it quickfix data any more. The HX9V has current quickfix data.

Last night I took them both into my garden to let them get a fix there. This is to allow them to sync their clocks so they're not miles out for a later test.

This afternoon, over 12 hours since either were last powered on, I took them both to the park. I picked a bench to put them both onto and also another camera to record the screen. There was only one tree somewhat nearby and it was otherwise clear around.

I turned on the satnav first, as that is slow to react to a power on. Once the screen lit up I turned on the HX9V. Looking at the video, it took about 40 seconds for the satnav to get a lock.

The HX9V GPS display showed the odd satellite flicking into and out of detection. I waited... and waited... and had to laugh when the HX9V turned itself off to save power. It didn't manage a lock in that time! Ok, one more go. I turned it back on again. Eventually this time it did manage to get a GPS lock a few seconds short of two minutes to get it.

If I'm really bored I might do a youtube video of this, which was my original intention. But I'm not sure anyone is bored enough to watch 6 minutes of not a lot happening even if I can find enough random commentary to go with it.